Homework and Reading

Homework

Maths and English homework will be set on alternate weeks to be handed in on the following Thursday.

Spellings/times tables will be tested on Fridays.

Please listen to your child read at least 3 times a week and make a note of it in their Reading Diary.

​The purpose behind the selection of 6 keys books for each year group had its origins in some inspirational training our staff received from academics and authors at the British Library.

They recommended that the best way to teach grammar, punctuation and the development of well-structured writing to children, was to use real books. The teachers chose the required readers as a basis for the teaching of writing across the school. This is not a list of books to race through to reach the top because THERE IS NO TOP.

They are all excellent models of the type of writing we want to encourage and promote in every classroom. Your child has three options in order to access these books:

1 Read the book themselves.

2 Read the book together with an adult.

3 Listen to an audio version of the book.

Your child needs to experience the wonder of beautiful stories, well told, with all the joy and excitement that entails. How else are we going to make them want to be writers?

Reading in Class 3

Yours child has selected a new school reading book from the library today. He/she has been given an Accelerated Reader band from which to start reading. We will review these bands as we go through the term.

As well as their individual reading books, your child will be learning and practising reading skills in a variety of ways:

Phonics sessions – these are an opportunity for children to learn and practise decoding skills, extend vocabulary and acquire a bank of words that they can spell accurately. Phonics sessions last half an hour and take place three times a week.

Guided Reading – a group of children or similar reading level working with a teacher or teaching assistant on a shared text. Children have individual copies of the text. Guided reading sessions give children an opportunity to discuss a story information book together, developing comprehension and inference skills and text awareness.

Reading throughout the curriculum – reading does, of course, take place throughout the day in other lessons. In science, for example, children will be reading/ learning new technical vocabulary and practising using it themselves. I our theme work we will be finding out about the rainforest and how it has been destroyed using research skills with both books and the internet.

Individual reading to teacher/ teaching assistant/ volunteer – this is just one part of the reading that your child will do at school.

Your child will benefit from as much practise as possible of the reading skills that are taught, so please hear your child read as often as you can. Children who read on three occasions at home during the week will be entered for a special class raffle to be drawn at the end of term.

Reading Diaries

Mrs Fleet (Teaching Assistant) will check Reading Diaries every Friday to find out which children need raffle tickets. Please make sure you date and sign the Reading Diary, indicating the title of the book and which pages have been read, when your child reads at home.

Please feel free to use the reading diary for general home/ school notes as well, but do ask your child to alert us to the fact if there is an important note as diaries are not checked every day!

Spellings will also be sent home in the spellings book on Fridays. Our spelling test will take place the following Friday.

Finally, reading, like everything we do at school, should be a home/ school partnership. If you have any further queries please do not hesitate to speak to us after school. If any parent is able to come into school to hear readers or practise maths facts with pupils we would be really grateful.